Survey says: ESL methodologies can improve productivity

SAN FRANCISCO  There is a strong feeling within the design community that electronic system level (ESL) methodologies can improve productivity, according to the results of a survey conducted by ESL Now, a loose organization of more than 20 companies focused on encouraging ESL adoption.

Of the 141 respondents to the online survey, which was conducted in late May and early June, more than 98 percent answered that they either agree or strongly agree that ESL methodologies can strongly improve productivity.

AK Kalekos, vice president of marketing and business development at ESL tool provider CoWare (San Jose, Calif.), said the results were not a surprise to the members of ESL Now.

"Clearly, this was the way we expected the results would go," Kalekos said. "The SystemC and System Verilog wars seem to have been settled and SystemC is the winner. It is only natural that SystemC is growing at the rate that it is."

Among the other results of the survey, when asked the type of designs they are currently working on, 31.7 percent of respondents said system-on-chip (SoC) designs, followed by field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) at 27.7 percent and ASICs at 24.7 percent.